Danni Rose (The Sherwood)

One a linebacker, for their high school team, brown haired guy, taller than him, bigger than him too was staring at her ass like they did when she was in high school. It used to make him mad then too. It didn’t do much for him now either.

Chapter 5

She was tired. Her feet were screaming at her because her father required the girls to wear shoes that made their legs look good. Danni would have worn tennis shoes but boots with two-inch heels made their legs look fantastic was her father’s bright idea.

That was also part of her parents’ marital issues. Her father’s wandering eye. He didn’t cheat on her mother, but her momma called it emotional cheating when he flirted with every female at the bar. Her dad was a good, looking man. Her mother was still beautiful too. Both were crazy without each other. Maybe someday they would figure it out because since the divorce, her dad flirted with no one.

Her shoulder was also throbbing when she stopped her truck in the drive and let her feet hit the asphalt. Even that caused a ripple of pain up her calves.

She headed to her sidewalk. Slate rock that she had carried from the creek behind her cabin to create a walkway, a beautiful one if she said so herself. The woods surrounding her made it darker than in town. She had forgotten to turn on the porch light before she left because she was in such a big hurry. It was kind of eerie out here all alone, right now.

Danni gazed around at her surroundings. When an owl hooted across the street she automatically turned in that direction. The moon overhead gave little, light at this time of night adding to the scariness. Out of the shadows, he appeared and scared the shit out of her. She screamed. “It’s just me,” Jackson declared taking a step back.

“What the hell?” She slapped at him. “Where is your truck?”

“Did you forget that Mom’s house is just a half mile across the field?” Across the field, through the creek and into her backyard. Too damn close.

She should have remembered that. It wasn’t why she had bought the cabin. She had purchased it because it was cheap. It was all that she needed. A one-bedroom, one-bathroom, kitchen and living room, log cabin that didn’t leak and had little yard work. She had next to no maintenance either.

The work it needed, she could do herself and she could make it her own. The first place she had without her mom, dad or her brothers hovering over her. Fretting, that she was never going to be herself again and get over Jackson breaking her heart.

He was trying not to laugh at her, she noticed.

“Go home,” she told him. Danni stepped around Jackson.

“Just talk to me,” he pled with her.

“Nope, not happening,” Danni snapped. She kept moving towards her front door. Walker was at the bar still helping her dad and Seth clean up. Shortly, an hour at most if that, he would show up, she hoped.

His next words stopped her cold. “Mom is dying.”

She was halfway to the porch. It wasn’t fair that he was appealing to her sensitive nature. She knew what Selma dying meant to him. She could hear the pain in his voice when he told her that. His brothers were of no help, being in the military, no consolation to him.

She didn’t even know what he was doing now. Maybe, it wasn’t so easy for him to pack up and leave for Sherwood. He could have a girlfriend, a wife. A family. Four beautiful kids, that looked like him as they had dreamed of having one day. Not so implausible. He was twenty-seven, just a year older than her.

Danni gazed at him for a moment. Surprisingly, she didn’t care. “Is that why you came home?” She asked.

“One of the reasons,” he replied leaving the implication of something more hanging between them.

Danni didn’t ask what his other reasons were. She didn’t want to know if she was one. “Come in,” she said. She couldn’t turn him away now.

She headed towards her front door and glanced over her shoulder to see if he was following. He wasn’t. “Jackson, I’m wearing shorts. It’s cold outside. If you want to talk, come inside with me otherwise, goodnight.”

Danni headed inside, unlocking her front door she realized that Jackson was standing right behind her now. Like before, he moved with quiet, grace while she stomped in work hoots or cowboy boots like she had on tonight that were killing her feet.

“Still light on your feet,” she declared eying him over her shoulder.

“Still beautiful as ever,” he answered.

She snorted not responding to his compliment.

Inside, Danni offered him a drink. This put the island that separated her living space from her kitchen between him and her. She stayed in the kitchen and handed him a glass of her homemade lemonade over the wooden countertop where he sat on one of her barstools.

He had taken a seat on one of the high-backed barstools on the other side of the island. Thank you, Jesus, she said in her head. She wanted to get this over with and get him back across the creek to Selma’s place.

Jackson took a long swig from her best glass. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he let the cool drink slide down his throat. Then he sighed like the lemonade was the closest he had come to drinking in quite a while. Maybe it was. Danni’s lemonade was homemade, and she had been told it was the best in Sherwood.

Danni took a sip of her water. “What’s wrong with Selma?” She asked.